It's sort of creepy to think of the planet as giant, collected mass of flesh, but... [t]he more you weigh, the more calories you need to move around and the more resources you use up in general. So, in that respect, the fatter you are, the more you tax the planet....

I always believe those who so worry about the population growth and their wear and tear on the environment should off themselves first as an example. Imagine how much better the environment would be without their using the resources, taxing the planet.

You may not need AC in wisconsin but I live in South Carolina. I cool more than I heat but I'll bet my annual utility bill is much less than anyone north of the Mason - Dixon line. So if you want to save energy, move south.

A guy I know had experimental surgery because he couldn't get a liver transplant. They took out his stomach, most of his liver and rerouted most of his other vital organs.

Now he can eat only cheese, chicken and eggs for the rest of his life. A piece of pizza or hamburger would kill him.

Anyway, he was back on the road in 90 days and lost 145 pounds since, probably a little more than half his previous weight.

He showed me a picture, taken after the skin reduction surgery a year later, of his surgeon holding a 2' x 3' triangle of skin/flesh that had been removed; it weighed over 21 pounds. It had a hole where his navel used to be.

If you really believed in global warming and also believed that your consumption decisions should reduce your personal contribution to green house gasses, you would stop all air travel, especially international air travel.

Personally, I'm willing to give up lots of things I don't like: attending the ballet, playing golf, visiting my in-laws.

Yes, consuming to excess is a problem. However, so are policies which encourage converged migration and immigration. It is imperative that each administrative district (e.g. nation) conduct comprehensive exploitation of the resources (i.e. material, human) endowed to them.

"Who are we to decide what is good biomass and what is evil biomass? If you don't believe in a creator, than why are you more morally responsible for your biomass than a beetle is?"

Uh, maybe because we're conscious of the effects of our actions and beetles are not. Moreover, when we discuss "moral responsibility to the biomass," we're really saying, "We'd better change our ways or the blowback will bite our asses!"

The big lie here is that "the planet" is being taxed. The planet's carrying capacity is beyond our puny imagining. But go tell that to an egomaniacal lefty. In any case the agenda is about control of other humans not caring for "the planet."

You do have to tell the dog not to lean on you in bed. The dog finds you comfortably cool, since dogs run 100.5 degrees F.

No. You don't need air conditioning. I like air conditioning.If I knew where the guy who invented air conditioning lived, I drive over to his house, give him a thousand dollars, "Here. this is for you." And give him a big hug.That's how much I like air conditioning.Don't get me started on flush toulets.

Bottom line: the number one way to keep your carbon footprint low is to be poor - or mimic those who are which includes limiting your circumference of travel.

But to get out of poverty countries have to have energy to grow, like China, who is still building a coal plant a week and has now surpassed the US as the number one polluter.

I do not see any way around the basic prosperity=growth=energy=pollution. You can distribute the energy towards things more worthy than an economy based on of rich people tchotkes, but so far I don't see any way around the basic equation (other than nukes and we know the issues there.)

A few years back, I saw a study that showed that using modern building techniques we could house the entirety of the human race in an area the size of Texas.

What we're facing is not a population issue or an energy issue or a food issue. Yearly we throw out megatons of food even *before* it gets to our tables. What we're facing is an efficiency issue.

Companies, for instance don't produce waste because they're greedy or want to harm the planet - its just that it makes good financial sense. Our government then, in its wisdom, doesn't try to come up with cost effective ways to recycle this waste into viable usable raw materials - they just fine the companies and institute feel good recycling programs that make people happy.

We don't have manufacturing methods that embody the entirety of the production process. We just don't think that way.

How the environmentalists do despise the rest of humanity. Example: the comments at the article. It's like it's not THE environment, it's THEIR environment, and the rest of us are cluttering up THEIR environment.

"How did we humans become so powerful that we can destroy in a matter of a few years that which has survived for billions?"

We're not; we can't destroy the earth. We may succeed in destroying--not the human race--human society as it has come to be configured, leading to a harsher existence for the humans who will continue after us.

I've never lived in a house with air conditioning. I keep my windows open 24/7 for about 10 months of the year. I use the fireplace for heat in winter by burning last year's home remodeling project. There always seems to be one.

DBQ -- I did hang clothes out in the winter when we lived where it was relatively cold ... and I hate to confess this, but part of my pioneering overseas living involved washing diapers by hand and freeze drying them. (Do not bow, it is not necessary.)

But I have also dried clothes inside in the winter by the stove. My young married daughter pre-dryer hung them around the bathroom.

We do have a dryer BTW, which I do use when I need to, but I'm fine with outside and it cuts our power bill.

The point isn't that our choice makes us superior, it is the utter hypocrisy (and / or stupidity) of the enviromental wackos.

And pre dryer -- Well, I was raised in the cold northeast, and dang of those people up there didn't dry their clothes somehow in the winter!! My dad got my mom one of the very first dryers on our block in the 1950s and I still grew up with the neighbors on both sides hanging their cloths out the window on a line to the nearby tree. Winter and summer.

Actually Instapundit linked a story back on June 10 saying if you really wanted to save the planet you'd "get out of Vermont." The linked study showed that the air-conditioner-using South uses less energy per year, overall, than any other part of the country, whereas the Northeast uses the most.

"Bugs contribute more to the weight of the biomass than people do. Therefore, we should kill as many as possible.... maybe by burning the rainforests?"

Bacteria are probably 30% of the weight of all biomass. Maybe 50%. They are deep in the earth making oil as we speak. They get everything in the end and make something else of it. The rusticles that are eating the Titanic are another example. Once we figure out how to use them to make stuff for us, we will all be rich.

"We may succeed in destroying--not the human race--human society as it has come to be configured, leading to a harsher existence for the humans who will continue after us."

But at what point is the answer for this preemptively living a harsher existence *on purpose* in order to save us from what might happen?

I notice that the linked article is on one of the conglomeration of web-sites that includes Io9 which has the "we come from the future" slogan. I call it the "We come from the future, and the lights are out." corner of the internet.

It's coming folks. The last safe prejudice we have will be against fat people. All other prejudices are against a protected group of one kind or another. But FAT! Well, there's a group of people with no redeeming qualities and no reason to live! (In the interest of full disclosure, and for the benefit of those who'll show up to accuse me of being fat.) I'm not at the low end of the weight chart.)

Fareed Zakaria had a very common sense enviromentalist on his show yesterday. Briefly, he considers all this green initiative just yuppie horseshit. This guy pushes water and air pollution improvements that actually saves people's lives in third world countries. I would send money to this guy.

Deidre - "The 'overpopulation' types are just trying to make their own deathwishes 'moral' instead of 'emo.'"

No, when you have 13 million Haitians plus 3.8 million in "Diaspora" instead of the 1.48 million Haitians of 1900 - you have an overpopulation problem. Especially given the arable hand of Haiti can only feed 7 million. Egypt is another high-breeding country utterly tapped of water and arable land...40% of food is now imported for basic subsistence on largely Western and Saudi charity...and unemployment is 40%. Egypt is projected to double its population yet again in 38 years. Will the "Wealthy West and Saudis" feed that cohort?

========================Brent - "The world is doing just fine thank you and can sustain another 3 - 5 billion easily. you may believe differently, but that's all you've got - belief, not proof, and certainly not science on your side."

Unfortunately, not true on either count. Ag experts, forestry people, and hydrologists well understand what are sustainable numbers for various regions of the world. Sustainable without further deterioration of watersheds, forests, salinification. Some regions are already well above sustainable popluation numbers. Of course the proponents of GROWTH!! will say another 10 billion are fine because that will stimulate economic growth and the countries with surplus ag capacity can just feed the 3rd World for free or --say---let 100 million surplus Pakistanis, 8 million more Haitians, and 40 million starving Africans into America because we can "carry" a population double our present one. (But lots of Americans don't feel they have a moral duty to destroy their nation and culture in the name of 3rd World compassion)

And it's true enough that industrialization is dirty and modernizing pollutes, but the answer isn't to go all anti-progress on the world.

Without wealth people do not have the options to make more expensive but "greener" choices, they do not have the option to have fewer children (though tyrannical governments may drag you to the hospital and rip your seven month fetus from your body). The way to get to that place of privilege is *through* the dirty middle parts.

Going through the dirty middle parts means that we've got the luxury of expensive but utterly "clean" energy alternatives, such as nuclear or probably even anti-matter or other exotic things, so long as the anti-progress sorts don't get their way.

We'll figure out how not to be fat, too, simply because people don't enjoy being fat, if we're left well enough alone.

Do we really have to take this to the extreme? Can't we just restrict the weight of the women. They don't want the jobs doing the heavy lifting, and fighting, so let's just keep them svelte. Then everyone is happy.

And it's true enough that industrialization is dirty and modernizing pollutes, but the answer isn't to go all anti-progress on the world.

Indeed, environmentalism itself is a luxury of wealthy societies. In countries where people are worried about their next meal they don't spare a thought for next century's soil quality or whether it's moral to wipe out the Red Breasted Seed Eater.

Going by "being fat" as a indicator of resource consumption is not that valid.

1. Skinny Barack Obama is by far and away the single largest carbon consumer on the planet.

2. An American family of 4 consumes more food resources than an emaciated Haitian women and her 9 chilluns. She herself came from a family of 12 and two of her kids are already pregnant and she wants all 9 chilluns to have 9 chilluns of their own for Jesus to love.

What is the bigger problem? American lifestyle or a century of Haitian overbreeding?

3. While someone might be fat, they may consume less calories each day than the thin devoted exercise freak who bikes 50 miles a day and eats 3 heaping meals. Is it more "moral" to eat far more than a sedentary person as long as you have leisure activities that only enrich your life and not others lives that "burns off the extra carbs"?Or would it be more "moral" to quit exercising and eat less because high breeders in East LA, Pakistan...will need the "excess American food"???

When talking about sustainability and "carrying capacity" and population one should always keep in mind that everything human ingenuity has come up with to feed the world is evil.

All good people advocate the least efficient ways to produce food in the scarcest amounts.

Can we clean the water we use or desalinate enough ocean water? Of course we can, if we are allowed to produce the wealth to support that without being shamed into politically induced "equality". Can we develop ever more ways to produce ever more food? Of course we can. We will not come to the end of sunlight, and we will not come to the end of water. Is there physical space for billions of more people to live? Absolutely.

Can we do any of that without changing anything or while enforcing rearward progress in the name of eating nothing but grass fed beef and vegetables grown in an a state of nature? No.

""When people think about environmental sustainability, they immediately focus on population.""

Well, whenever I hear about "environmental sustainability", I think about the necessity of thinning the population of environmental wackos.

Interesting to me though is that this attitude or belief of theirs seems to be counter-productive in the long run. Those most worried about this supposed problem are least likely to breed, and those most likely to breed, are least likely to be overly worried about this. Some sort of Darwinism, or, maybe a variant of Tarranto's Roe effect.

Much of this world is well on the way to ZPG, or worse. Apparently, the only reason that we don't have the demographic problems of Europe, Japan, and soon, China, is immigration (illegal or not). And, who in the advanced parts of the world are still having a lot of children? Those least likely to worry about environmental sustainability. Think Muslims in Europe, the Middle East, and into Asia, and some of the more backwards Roman Catholics who follow their Church's teachings less critically than most do here and in Europe.

Maybe this is how nature counter balances the survival advantages of increasing intelligence - that the smarter you get, the more you may be likely to think that man is destroying the Earth, and therefore, the less you breed.

We haven't used our a/c for a couple of years since the dog kept peeing on the outside unit and it doesn't work. Even without a/c our electric bill is sky high - nearly $200. Our latest natural gas bill, on the other hand, was under $15.

Just pray that Bloomberg dosn't hear about how much salt is in the oceans but the oceans' salinity level manages to stay the same for billions of years. He will feel challenged to create a control system better than God did.

If all the salt in the oceans was moved ashore, it would cover the land to a height of 5 feet.

NaCl is poison in excess. Sea water cannot be consumed by man and live. The Dead Sea is full of salt from rivers, but the oceans are not out of balance like that. Why?

Now that is scary. Only 3% of the waters on earth can sustain human life. AND Wisconsin has way more than its share...I SAY OCCUPY AND REDISTRIBUTE TODAY, you brat eating fresh water hogs!